MICK TAYLOR BAND @ BEARSVILLE THEATER, 4/30/10

by Michael Eck
Special to The Times Union
WOODSTOCK – There was a Rolling Stone in Woodstock Friday night.
Mick Taylor, who replaced the deceased Brian Jones in the Stones, brought his band to the Bearsville Theater for 90 minutes of blues rock delivered as only Brits can do it.
Taylor was not feral the way he was with the Stones, but he still proved why he’s the guitar hero’s guitar hero.
His wide vibrato and thick, creamy tone as often as not recalled his contemporary, Peter Green, but Taylor also played plenty of slide, using both glass and metal tubes for different tones.
Unfortunately, Taylor did seem tired, and his voice is already nearly shot after only two nights on the road.
“I lost my voice,” he said at the top of the show. “It’s on the road somewhere between here and Northampton.”
But people really don’t go to a Taylor show for the singing.
Things started off with a slow burn on the poppish “Secret Affair”, but around mid-set Taylor really started offering fans some of his trademark licks, simple blues mannerisms delivered with authority.
But the very repetition of some of these hammered-on phrases created a specific tension, and the release into the following phrase made the best moments gripping.
Here and there bits of Stones classics would peek out — a touch of “Bitch” or a bit of “Satisfaction.”
In Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell” Taylor even quoted his pal Eric Clapton’s “Layla.”
Taylor’s four piece group played like a bar band with a heavy resume (especially considering pianist Max Middleton used to work for Jeff Beck). That’s not a slight, just to note that the entire evening had a journeyman’s air to it.
Taylor, for example, never went the virtuoso route. He played what he felt in the moment, and so did the rest of the band.
“You Shook Me” was straight up Chicago blues. “Alabama” was another road warrior ballad. And “Fed Up With The Blues” was gritty and tight.
None brought down the house, but all had plenty of groove and guitar.
Taylor handed the vocal mic over to rhythm guitarist Denny Newman for his own “Burying Ground” and an encore of Robert Johnson’s “Stop Breaking Down.”
Both were impressive, and while Taylor had left the stage for the first, he returned at the end of the tune and spiked it with one of his best solos of the night.
By the end of the performance, the 61-year-old bandleader did seem totally knackered, saying, “what is this, our second show of the tour?”
While the Woodstock audience had a fine time, one wonders how crowds might fare a little further down the line.
Voodelic opened the show with a muscular set of jam band rock with a heavy edge.

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It’s being reported that Mick Taylor was admitted to the I.C.U. at Charlton Memorial Hospital this evening after canceling the scheduled show in Fall River. Early word is pneumonia but no verification of that.